


Potential

by Trobadora



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Gerald Tarrant never became human again? What if he was revived as the Hunter? - An alternate ending to the third book of the trilogy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potential

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lmeden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/gifts).



> When you mentioned the bond between Gerald and Damien in your Yuletide letter, this was the idea that came to mind immediately. I hope you enjoy it! :)

> We've won _, he thought. But it was only the journey that was finished. Ahead of them lay Shaitan, and a Working so deadly that no man might attempt it and survive._
> 
> C.S. Friedman, _Crown of Shadows_ , chapter 36

  


  
**PROLOGUE**   


The Hunter came to stand next to him, and for a long moment they looked at each other. The bond between them was all but a physical line connecting them, and what flew through it was not merely terror. Something shivered across his nerves, almost a feather-like touch against his skin.

No time for this now.

Damien looked up, to where Mount Shaitan still wasn't visible. They'd won; Karril had chosen his side and would guide them. Calesta would not be allowed to kill them, but the illusions still stood. They would have to climb by the demon's guidance to reach their destination.

Once upon a time that alone would have made him shudder, but now he was merely grateful to Karril. The Iezu had proven a friend, and that was more than good enough for Damien now, demon or no.

A sudden weight: the Hunter's hand on his shoulder. Through the channel between them he knew without looking, but he turned his head anyway and grinned, humourlessly.

"Almost there."

"Almost there," Tarrant agreed. He didn't move his hand.

Damien remembered the first time the Hunter had touched him, years ago: the terrible chill of undead flesh numbing his hand, deadly to any living thing. He remembered the many times through all their struggles when he'd endured that touch, terrible as it was, and never less terrible for all that it had ceased to be strange. He remembered, because he could no longer feel it; now, that weight on his shoulder was a comfort, unwarm as coldfire, yet also uncold. Familiar in its temperature, as comfortable as his own skin.

Completing the bond between them had changed that much - the Hunter and he, they were no longer separate, and he could no longer fully perceive him from the outside. He bore that touch easily, now: He had taken part of the Hunter into his very soul, and his essence, which had seemed so vile to him before, was familiar to that part. A reassuring strength at his back, a comfortable weight on his shoulder. He could relax against the Hunter's touch.

This far he was corrupted, this far he had strayed from the path: that the touch of a creature that had given itself to the ultimate evil could be a comfort to him.

And yet he could regret none of it.

"Let's go," he muttered.

The Hunter nodded and withdrew his hand. It felt like a loss.

But Shaitan lay ahead. They climbed.

  


* * *

  


  
**CHAPTER 1**   


It was over almost immediately. The earth fae, lava-hot, burnt through Tarrant's body within an instant. But through the channel between them, Damien felt the Hunter use that last moment to bind the demon Calesta, to force him to absorb what he couldn't tolerate: sacrifice, selflessness, altruism.

The volcano's power, channelled through the body of a man - earth fae, so strong it was a miracle Tarrant was able to sustain the Working for even a second. But sustain it he did; the Hunter's inhuman strength, a second from burning, still supported a Working more powerful than any that had been attempted on this planet before.

And in that same instant something powerful reverberated through the fae. Damien couldn't Work here in this power spot; no human could survive it. But he felt it clearly as if his senses had been Worked, sweeping over him, everywhere. Then it was gone again, and all that was left was fire.

Burning.

Death.

The one thing Tarrant feared more than anything: death, and what came after.

And he'd given it willingly, to destroy Calesta.

 _The sacrifice of eternity, made in the very face of Hell ..._

Damien felt the channel between them die, felt Tarrant _gone_ even as he watched his body crumple, fall from the edge of the crater where he'd been standing, tumble down the mountain-slope, finally coming to rest against a protruding rock.

The demon was vanquished. They had won.

And Tarrant was dead.

It was over. Tarrant was dead. And behind him, a new dawn rose.

~*~

Damien sat on the ground, blinking into the growing light. The clarity of early morning hung over the volcano's slope, illuminating the strange gathering. The group of Iezu demons, some of them human in form, some of them strange and alien, like nothing he had ever seen. The swirl of colours and light and images that was the mother of the Iezu, a creature more strange than even her strangest children, hovering above the slope of the volcano. And beneath it -

\- beneath it, crumpled to the rocky surface, Tarrant's body, burned to a crisp.

 _May God have mercy on him_ , Damien prayed.

He could still feel it, the very air vibrating with a Working so powerful no human soul could hope to contain it.

What now? He looked around - at the volcano's peak, the Iezu gathered here, the vision of light and movement that was their mother ... None of them quite seemed to matter right now.

And then, images rolled over the mountain, tangling and swirling like living fae, a storm of vision and sensation impossible to interpret, yet clear as the most familiar image. In a language Damien could not understand and yet understood, the Mother spoke.

Damien knew who she was, suddenly: a stranded spacefarer, incapable of communicating with the inhabitants of this world despite all her efforts, despite birthing her Iezu children as a bridge between them. All in vain. But now ...

Now, a dying sorceror had given her the means, the understanding, the last part of the pattern.

Now, they could speak, and listen, and understand, all thanks to Tarrant and the Workings of his last moments.

Damien was almost unsurprised. Tarrant had always had a few more surprises up his sleeve. Why should now be any different?

His throat constricted again. Perhaps it was only the channel, perhaps it was only that they'd been bound so close, soul-deep, but he felt as if part of himself had been ripped out. He felt empty, incomplete. Something vital was missing, something irreplaceable.

 _Tarrant._

Damien put his face into his hands and wept.

~*~

The Mother had gathered over the Hunter's fallen body, there on the peak of the volcano where he had burned, and her lights shone all the brighter in the dawn, sparks of fire and ash raining through her.

Beneath the light of the Mother's alien form, the charred remains of the Hunter's body twitched.

~*~

Damien stared. He was hallucinating. The Mother's mental touch was driving him insane. This was not happening; it couldn't be.

He wiped his hand across his face and blinked. The lights, the heat, the ash, they all made it difficult to see clearly, here in this terrible, deadly place.

"What is she _doing_?" he asked out loud, not expecting an answer. It was barely more than a whisper, but opening his mouth to Shaitan's deadly, sulphurous air was enough to send him into a coughing fit. Quickly, he wrapped the scarf Tarrant had given him tightly across his face again.

Next to him, Karril stirred. "She's not done with him yet."

Damien had almost forgotten the Iezu was still beside him. He turned his head, incredulous. "He died - I felt it!"

He'd been burnt to cinders by the lava-hot earth-fae of the volcano. Nothing could have survived that. _Nothing._ And he'd felt him die, felt it in his very soul.

"He died," Karril agreed. "He died from the shock when Shaitan's power burnt him out, and most of his body burnt to cinders. But those who die from shock sometimes can be revived, can't they, Healer? Think of it as restarting a heart." He tugged his earlobe, wryly - a curiously human gesture that nonetheless seemed to fit him quite well. "Only not a heart."

Damien thought of the Hunter, captured by their enemy back in the rakhlands, years ago; burnt in fire for ten days, Working all the while to restore his flesh even as it was burnt anew every second, surviving a charred, broken mess - and yet healing, healing in the end, surviving.

He thought of the Hunter, surviving even the sunlight itself -

Damien watched with burning eyes, even though there was nothing to see. Just the Mother, hovering over the volcano, her lights playing over Tarrant's body.

"You bastard," Damien swore, or prayed, or pleaded, he wasn't sure which.

Then it was over. The Mother rose and finally released Tarrant.

Damien was up on his feet already, rushing to Tarrant's side.

~*~

Damien knelt beside the Hunter's charred body, lying here in the rock's shadow, still somewhat protected from the rising sun. Looking at him now, it was almost impossible to believe there was something still alive in there.

Tarrant twitched again.

Damien's heart clenched. He couldn't imagine the pain Tarrant must be in. Hadn't he done enough, given enough? Didn't he deserve some respite?

No time now. Something must be done, and quickly.

He knelt by the Hunter's side and drew his knife. Slicing into his own flesh, offering his blood to the charred caricature of a man, trickling it into his mouth, hoping, hoping - surely if there was anything of life left in him, he would take it, he would -

The channel between them roared to life. He felt a rush of terror stronger than any he'd experienced before, at the Hunter's hand or otherwise, and beneath it a pain so bone-deep and crushing that he almost couldn't bear even the faint echo of it he was receiving from Tarrant. Damien fell to the earth as darkness closed around him.

For a long time, there was nothing but terror and pain, pain and terror, everything he was subsumed by the Hunter's hunger.

 _He would suck me in, as fuel_ , he had said, once, when he'd explained why he couldn't connect with a terribly injured Tarrant through a Working. It was happening now. Tarrant was swallowing him whole.

The Hunter was consuming him, draining, _using him up_ \- and Damien's terror at that was merely more fuel to his insatiable hunger.

But he held on, clung to consciousness, preserving that much of himself so that he might endure this, clinging to a single thought: Tarrant lived.

Tarrant lived, and was feeding on him, taking what he needed to replenish himself. Damien took a strange kind of comfort from that. They hadn't had this kind of bond back then, in the rakhlands. It must make a difference, oh, it must, it must - surely this must help - -

And yes, help it did. Slowly, the overwhelming terror subsided until Damien could struggle into a sitting position, his heart still racing, adrenaline coursing through him, but functional, just enough.

With blurry eyes he watched what had seemed nothing but cinder return to a state that, while still too terrible to contemplate, was _healable_. Burnt, oh so burnt, but flesh beneath it, and blood, a living body.

Tarrant certainly couldn't Work his own flesh, here in the deadly currents of Shaitan. Touching the incredibly powerful fae again would have killed him again, just as surely as it did the first time. But the cells repaired themselves. Natural healing, as much as it could be called that for such as him, or an imprinted pattern, left over from his last Workings? The cells of his body, revived by the Mother's strange science, must still be resonating with the pattern of Tarrant's last Working. Healing, impressed upon them by repetition upon repetition upon repetition, Worked to make him last long enough to bind Calesta ... Now the last remnants of it were restoring him, incredible though it might seem: His body kept repairing itself.

And then the eyes opened.

Pale eyes, bloodshot but not burnt, in a face that still seemed too burnt to be alive: Clearly Tarrant was conscious enough to have directed some of his healing in specific directions, so he might see.

"Gerald," Damien gasped.

For a moment, he saw panic in Tarrant's eyes, and then he thought to say it, and think it across the channel too, in case his hearing was not repaired yet: "It's all right, we'll get you to safety. I promise. You'll be all right." He had no idea how to accomplish that, but Tarrant must feel his resolve. He would not let him die like this, not after everything, not after surviving Hell itself, and Calesta, and all the power of Shaitan. Gerald Tarrant would not die here, burnt by the sun. He would _not_.

It seemed to him that there was comprehension in the Hunter's eyes for a fleeting moment, before they closed again, his mind falling back into unconsciousness.

He'd be all right.

It hadn't been until he spoke the words out loud that he really understood. Tarrant would be all right. He'd done it, had defeated Calesta, had sacrificed everything to do it - and yet had survived.

He'd been dead, but now he was healing.

Tarrant was alive.

~*~

Far from Shaitan, across the Black Ridge Mountains, the Forest reared up. Up. From the whirlpool of fae that was its heart, darkness rose and swept over, swept into the mortal constructs thriving here. The deathly trees, the vines, the fungus, the worms. Bacteria multiplied in a surge, insects swarmed, trees stretched their prehensile branches. Power surged wildly through every part. It would have devoured itself, if it could, but fae couldn't feed on fae.

There were people, though, and it could feed on those.

Its master was gone. Its master's apprentice, he who'd taken control in the Hunter's absence, was dead. The Forest understood none of it, only knew it had had direction and now had none. It fell upon what was before it.

There were three.

Of the humans that had invaded its terrain, there were three around whom the fae pooled.

One had something in common with the Forest's rightful master. The fae around him bent to his will, shaping futures as he shaped them. But he felt nothing of the Forest itself; would not direct it; could not.

One should have been the Hunter's prey. She'd been here before, the Forest remembered. It had struck at her then. But its master had stopped it, and then ... She'd become untouchable. The Forest did not like to touch her now.

And one ...

One was almost like a mirror image of the Hunter, fae-currents shaping the resemblance, shaping the truth. One was almost what the Forest needed. One was almost real to it.

The Forest reared, then fell on that one connection, the man in the centre of the invasion, the one who bore its master's signature, its master's fae-imprint. It clutched at him, grasping, gripping for that lost focus, that centre providing purpose. It - _he, he was a man, his name was Andrys Tarrant, he was not merely an extension of the Forest, he wouldn't let himself become that_ \- it quailed under the assault. It knew nothing of how to take control; it was deathly afraid.

The strength of the fae should have drowned the man in his own fear, the Forest knew without understanding. But the things that rose from fear refused to rise today. The wellspring of power coursed wildly, aimlessly through its native territory, only the physical constructs, the plants and animals of the Forest's ecosphere at its disposal. No fae constructs, no demonlings, nothing coalesced out of human fear. Had the Forest had a mind, a consciousness, it would have begun to fear in its turn, but it had no such thing. All mindless rage and blind grasping, it kept reaching, kept pouring its power forward.

It poured into nothing, and the human vessel - the man - Andrys ... Andrys Tarrant began to gain ground.

Until suddenly, there was something else. Far away, in the distance, but real in the way none of these human intruders were. Real, alive, powerful.

 _The Hunter._

The Forest turned away, throwing itself at its rightful master.

And everything fell into place.

  


* * *

  


  
**CHAPTER 2**   


Tarrant needed protection from the growing light. He needed darkness, and more food - but he was taking that, even now, even unconscious as he was, feeding constantly through the channel between them, drawing the terror out of Damien's brain -

 _Don't think about that now_ , Damien reminded himself. Bad enough to feel it all the time; he couldn't pay too much attention to it, or he'd be paralysed again.

He called for Karril. "Help me get him out of here," he asked the Iezu. "I can't carry him alone."

It was true, although he'd try if necessary. Exhaustion was heavy in his limbs, and the Hunter's broken body not a light thing to carry.

But Karril's friendship held true. Together they wrapped Tarrant up tightly in thick blankets to shield him from the sun as best they could, hefted him up and began to carry him down the mountain, on the shaded side opposite of the dawn.

Silently, they walked, stumbling over shaking earth, around pools of lava, past rocks nearly glowing with the heat, past smoking earth and acid streams, burning cinders in the air everywhere. Damien's arms ached from the weight he was carrying, the straps of his backpack cut into his shoulder, and every single muscle in his body felt pushed past endurance, yet they kept on, down the deadly landscape, not daring to take a break, until at last they reached cooler ground.

For a moment, they set Tarrant's body down on the rocky surface, and Damien took a drink from his canteen. Soot and ash and blood clung to him, and Tarrant had not made a single twitch since they'd started, but so long as the channel between them was alive, so long as Tarrant was still feeding, Damien knew he was still with them, growing stronger. Healing.

The break was too short, a few precious moments, yet that was all Damien allowed himself. If he truly rested, he would lose the struggle against his exhaustion.

He wondered, vaguely, whether Karril felt it too, or whether his Iezu body, nothing but a faeborn illusion, could even feel such a thing as physical exhaustion.

No matter.

On they went, further on, the earth shaking beneath their feet more than once, until at last they'd reached the valley. The sun rose higher in the sky; soon there would be no shade left even here. But Damien could spare no thought for that.

Finally, Karril freed one of his hands to gesture at the rocky mountainside. "Here," he said. "There's a cave in there. Deep enough. Stable enough."

Damien nodded.

Into the blessed darkness - and wasn't that a thought, that he was glad to be away from the sunlight, and in that realm of lightlessness that was Tarrant's domain? But so it was, and not only for the other man's sake. He'd grown too used to travelling at night.

The air felt cool inside, although he knew that must be an illusion; the volcano's heat radiated far, and the rock was warm to the touch. But compared to the rain of brimstone outside, Damien greeted it with gratitude. It would be too dark inside for the unWorked eye. He lit a small light as they went deeper, until the light from the cavern's mouth was no longer visible.

Just the shelter Tarrant needed; a cavern, far enough from the volcano's slope that the earth wasn't burning, deep enough for true darkness - not only protection from the deadly sunlight, but a gathering place for the dark fae.

Damien couldn't Work his senses here; Shaitan's currents still overwhelmed everything. But his imagination supplied the images well enough: dark fae clinging to every surface, slithering over the ground, wrapping around their limbs ... Being absorbed by Tarrant, who drew in such powers even as the vortex under the Forest drew in currents of all kind.

Here where sunlight had never penetrated, the very air must be reverberating with dark fae. They were safe.

Sudden joy surged up within him, tangling and mixing with the terror that was still at the back of his mind - they had made it; they would make it, everything would be all right - and he realised that Karril, whose aspect was pleasure, was feeding too.

He didn't begrudge the Iezu that.

Slowly, the two of them unwrapped the Hunter from the blankets. Tarrant was still recovering, ash falling from his body. In some places, new-formed skin was already visible. What he needed now was time.

No. More than that.

Damien took off his backpack and his sword. He wanted nothing more than to collapse too, to let his exhaustion take over and sink into blessed oblivion, but there was one more thing to do.

"Karril," he said. "Tarrant needs to be able to Work to fully heal, you know that. He needs more than the fae and my fear. But the currents here are still deadly. They'd fry him again if he tried."

The Iezu regarded him thoughtfully. Finally he agreed to block the currents around the cave, just enough to make them Workable. Iezu powers; not human sorcery, nothing like it - but just what they needed now.

"Good," Damien mumbled, "good." He extinguished the lamp to grant Gerald the complete darkness that would help him best. Then the last of his energy left him, and he collapsed to the rocky floor next to his companion.

"It will last," the Iezu promised. "I must return to my family, but you'll be safe here."

Damien managed a nod.

Karril seemed to say something else after that, but the darkness was already closing around Damien's mind, and he heard nothing more.

  


* * *

  


  
**CHAPTER 3**   


Damien started awake from yet another nightmare to the feeling of someone watching him. It was pitch dark, not a shred of light, but the sensation was as clear as vision.

He dared Work his sight, trusting in Karril, and looked around by the light of the fae: bright purple light, eerie radiance welling up from the floor, snaking across the cavern's walls.

The Hunter was looking at him.

Wrapped in dark fae like a malignant cloak, strengthening himself with its darkness.

 _Sitting up._

"You ... seem better," Damien said, hoarsely. The terror at the back of his mind was still there, but he pushed it aside.

The Hunter gave a small, painful nod. "I am. Although better in this case is a relative term."

Damien drank in the sight of the Hunter whole and recovering, his new, pale skin gleaming in the faint light, the robe he had helped himself to from Damien's backpack covering what injuries might still mar his flesh.

"You're alive," he said, marvelling anew at the grace that had allowed this, the survival of the ultimate sacrifice.

"Again, a distinctly relative term."

Unalive, undead, the Hunter could not be described with such simple, human terms. And yet ...

"You're here. You're not dead," Damien said. "Don't be nitpicking now." He hesitated. "But you died, didn't you? Karril said so. And I felt it. Your compact with the Unnamed is well and truly broken - even your scar is gone. And yet you're alive."

"Did you expect me to complain?" It seemed to Damien that the Hunter smiled slightly. A faint impression of humour flickered across the channel between them, for an instant superimposed on the terror that was its lifeblood, that had been Damien's constant companion since they had completed their bond.

Damien snorted. Did Tarrant deserve such a thing? To be granted a new beginning, after nine hundred years of evil to win a chance at redemption through a single moment of sacrifice? Damien had wished for it, prayed for it, for the Prophet, the Neocount, for Gerald Tarrant and all that he'd been, all that he'd become. Perhaps it didn't matter if he deserved it. The grace that had granted him a reprieve from death, from Hell itself, had not asked whether he did.

"It's a miracle," he breathed, awe rising in him again.

Tarrant glared at him. "You would call it that."

"And you?" Damien challenged. "What do you call it?"

Tarrant simply looked at him for a long time, his silver eyes glittering with pain, malevolence, and something else that Damien did not dare put a name to.

"The same," he finally whispered. "The same."

~*~

They sat quietly after that. Neither of them said a word; what was there to say? Damien watched the currents of earth fae flowing around them, watched the dark fae flow over the rock, the floor, twist and twirl around the Hunter, seep into his inhuman flesh. Nothing else stirred; there was only the flow of the fae and their own quiet breathing.

Then he saw it.

Like blinking away a film over his eyes, he became aware of was missing. In a place like this, earth fae and dark fae around them in such richness, with the terror of the Hunter's feeding coursing incessantly through Damien's mind - with all that, _something_ should have formed. The fae should have responded to his subconscious; demonlings or at least shadows should have come to life around them. The Hunter would have absorbed them, of course, but they weren't there at all.

Nothing was forming. Nothing.

Clarity struck: this was what he'd felt reverberating through the fae, in Tarrant's last moment. He _knew_.

He bent forward. "What did you do?" he almost shouted at Tarrant. "What did you _do_?"

Tarrant, to his credit, didn't pretend not to understand. His lips pressed together in a thin line for a moment, then: "What did you expect? Having that chance, should I have squandered it?" He shook his head. "With my sacrifice I bound Calesta. That was what I'd set out to do. But having the chance to do something else, to imprint something else on the fae, should I not have taken it?"

Damien swallowed. The Hunter's eyes seemed to burn into his very soul, their intensity hypnotising. "What did you do?" he asked again, hoarsely.

"You must understand," Tarrant said slowly, "I only had the briefest instant before I died. But I felt her - the Mother of the Iezu. I knew what was happening, and I thought: if a human sorceror can teach an alien as strange as the Mother to understand humans, why then shouldn't a human sorceror be able to make humanity intelligible to the fae?"

Damien was silent. It was too much, too vast a thing to contemplate: all their dreams come true at once. Humanity not only safe from Calesta's sadism, but in that very same act, protected from the planet itself ...

Uncontrolled, uncontrollable interaction with the fae had been humankind's bane since the Landing, the planet's natural forces responding to all parts of the human mind, unable to distinguish between want or fear, conscious or subconscious, will or desire. Casca's sacrifice, over a thousand years ago, had enabled them to live with it, barely, but ...

But now that wild alchemy was quelled. If this was true, if this held ... They were safe. Truly safe, for the first time since the Landing. There would be no more demonlings springing from every fear, every nightmare thought; no more doubts making machinery unreliable. No more of any of that.

What could he say? What could anyone do but stare in awe? He needed time to process this.

All he knew was that Tarrant had realised more of the Church's dream than one man should ever have been able to accomplish. The Prophet; the Hunter; and now, their Saviour. All one man, all him.

Some powerful emotion rose up inside him, and he had to swallow.

 _All him._

~*~

"Will you be able to move by nightfall?" Damien asked eventually.

The Hunter nodded his affirmation.

Damien sighed. "Finally. It's over."

There was an indecipherable expression on Tarrant's face. "In a sense. Certainly you're free to go where you will, now," he said.

And just like that, the relief was gone, replaced by dread, worry, anticipation - a conglomeration of feelings too complex to disentangle. "It's over," Damien repeated. "We've won. Two years, Gerald! Don't you think it's time for a break? Even for you."

"I must return to the Forest," Tarrant said quietly.

What? "No!" There was a crusade in the Forest. It was the last place they should go.

"Yes." Simply that, at first, and only after a pause did Tarrant deign to explain himself further. "Not merely for my own benefit, though the place itself certainly will aid my recovery. There is something far more important."

"Gerald?"

"The Mother," Tarrant said quietly. "The Mother, and the Iezu. Do you understand how much we might learn from them? If we could properly communicate with her, make use of her knowledge ..."

Knowledge, Tarrant's first, deepest hunger.

"You selfish bastard," Damien nearly shouted. "Can you for a moment think of something other than yourself?"

It wasn't fair, he knew, not in the face of Tarrant's sacrifice, but must the man be so - so - so _himself_ about everything?

Tarrant looked at him with what was clearly amusement. "I am," he assured Damien. "She has knowledge far beyond any we possess. What else might we learn from her, that would benefit more than one single man? Imagine that, Vryce! She's a starfarer; she might even give us back the stars. Our Terran heritage. Wasn't that what we always strove for, to regain the stars one day? Think, Vryce. No other sorceror has ever thought to study the Iezu. Even I myself have barely scratched the surface. But the materials I have collected, the sources I have gathered, and my own research ... it will give us a place to start. We need it. Now that she _can_ communicate, she will. She is, irrevocably, part of our future. We need - _need_ to know as much as we can, to shape it carefully. The alternative is to meddle blindly." Tarrant looked at him intently. "Do you understand?"

"I understand that you're obsessed," Damien retorted.

The Hunter raised his eyebrows in dark amusement. "Am I? Perhaps you have forgotten. Knowledge is what I've given everything for."

He hadn't forgotten, not quite. Tarrant had, once upon a time, slain his own family in a sacrifice to the Unnamed, to be spared death and see the fruits of his labour. But that was not all. "And this time, as you said yourself, you sacrificed any prospect of a future you might have, any knowledge of how things might turn out, to stop Calesta." It didn't cancel each other out - nothing could - but it was just as real. "Don't you dare act as if that didn't count."

Tarrant conceded the point with a wry smile. "I'm still what I made myself," he reminded. "I still need darkness to sustain myself, fear and human suffering." It seemed to Damien that Tarrant's voice was suffused with something that could almost be called affection, incongruous though that was.

"Gerald ..." Pained. Helpless.

"I'm no different now, in that respect, from what I was when we met. You swore to kill me for it." Tarrant looked at him, an indescribable emotion at play in his pale eyes.

Damien clenched a fist. He remembered.

He remembered only too well, the certainty of that time, the purity. He'd long been tainted by Tarrant's corruption, too far to ever hope to be clean of it again. How much had the Hunter truly changed? Had anything changed at all, except for what sheer necessity dictated? He'd never stopped being the Hunter. A killer, and worse. His damned pride, that was what had propelled him forward. Not selflessness, not at all, just his pride. One sacrifice changed nothing at all.

And yet -

And yet, there had been that moment, the terrible moment of despair in the face of the miracle of his survival.

And yet, there had been his sacrifice. If it hadn't been truly selfless, it could never have killed Calesta. It had been real.

It had been real. All of it, the man as much as the monster. What was he supposed to do with that?

He couldn't turn against Tarrant, couldn't even turn away from him, not now, after everything. He simply could _not_. Tarrant had not been a necessary evil to be borne for the greater good for a long time - not to him. No longer did he admire the Prophet and loathe the Hunter; he'd long lost the ability to fully distinguish between the two. There was just Gerald, whom he could no more give up than he could give up his faith, incompatible though they might seem.

What future could there be, for either of them, now? But when he looked at Tarrant, he was simply glad that he was alive. He could never bring himself to regret that, no matter the cost.

He couldn't.

"Don't you dare," he whispered. "Don't you even dare say that again."

A flicker of surprise in Tarrant's eyes, quickly suppressed - and something else, something that was almost - could it be? It looked like despair, an emotion he had seen on Tarrant's face but once or twice, and only in the direst circumstances. It was the Prophet's despair, when he'd found that he could not bear to look upon the God of his own faith.

Damien remembered the terrible look on Tarrant's face as he had acknowledged the miracle of his survival.

It was, he suddenly realised, the despair of a man who had seen a miracle and knew himself to be unworthy of it, who hoped he might be destroyed before he could prove that unworthiness.

Damien offered a prayer for all that Gerald Tarrant had been, had become, and all that he could yet be. If Tarrant could regret his own nature, even for a moment, his soul might still be saved.

"You told me yourself your appetites changed over time," he said, trying to put some conviction into his voice. "Don't deny that now. They can change again - you can change them. If anyone can do it, you can."

"And until then?" The Hunter's despair tore at Damien's soul, and he didn't know how to soothe it.

Didn't know that it _should_ be soothed.

For a moment, Damien hesitated. But Tarrant had been given a new life, an impossible chance. Someone had to make sure he didn't throw it away.

"Until then, feed on me. Please," he begged. "Take what you need; we know that can last you for months to come. Maybe more, with the channel between us strengthened."

"And how long can you bear it, Vryce? A year? Two? How long until you're driven mad by my constant presence in your mind, a life of constant terror? It might be bearable for you if I did my best to block the channel, although you would always feel it, but to use it as you suggest - no sane man could last for long, with that."

"There are many who would say I'm not particularly sane to begin with." Damien closed his eyes for a moment. "Please, Gerald. It'll do, for now. I'll manage. And in the long run - it's up to you to make sure it won't be too long for me."

Putting his life, his very sanity into the Hunter's hands. Somehow that, too, had become second nature to him.

It seemed to Damien that Tarrant was thinking hard. For the longest time he thought that Tarrant might not answer at all. Then, "All right," he finally said. "All right."

~*~

"There are a few hours yet before nightfall," Tarrant said eventually. "Best to rest while you can."

Damien nodded. This time, he took the time to retrieve his bedroll from his pack before he let himself collapse onto the ground again. Still not the most comfortable place to sleep, this, but he was exhausted enough that it made no difference.

But the roar of terror at the back of his mind - the product of his bond with the Hunter - had been increasing steadily here in the quiet of their seclusion. He'd been able to set it aside while there had been so much to do, and during their argument, but now?

Now, lying here, trying to sleep while Tarrant was keeping watch. Healing.

Now, completely at loose ends, with nothing left to do.

Where would they go from here?

What would Tarrant do? Surely he wouldn't simply go back to the unlife he had led, before Calesta had interrupted nine hundred years of evil with something worse. Surely ...

He tried to shake the thought, but his mind wouldn't quieten. The terror, the adrenal response - the Hunter's presence in his soul couldn't be denied, here, in the quiet of their camp.

Would it always be like this? Would he never know calm again?

How long would he be able to stand it?

He'd been so sure neither of them would come out of this alive. Tarrant, for his part, had been certain that he at least would die in the sacrifice to kill Calesta.

But no. They lived. They lived, and now he was stuck with this bond, for life. Damien would live with that taint forever, the Hunter's corruption a constant presence in his mind.

He very nearly panicked, and only through great effort managed to remain lying still. Not that he had any chance at all of deceiving the Hunter; Tarrant would know what he was feeling. But the pretence must be retained; that much dignity he must preserve for himself.

There was a touch on his shoulder.

Tarrant, not fully healed by any measure, but moving silently as ever, giving him an almost gentle squeeze.

And miraculously, the roar inside him quietened.

He blinked, looking up at Tarrant in confusion.

"I've fed enough," the Hunter said, almost gently. "I can give you a few hours of quiet sleep."

"How?"

"I'll be able to suppress the channel better," Tarrant said, his voice barely more than a whisper, "once I'm fully healed. Until then, I'm afraid I need physical contact for that particular Working."

And he settled at Damien's side, pulling him closer.

Damien blinked again, and a rush of weariness overwhelmed him. No remnant of demonic chill here, just a comfortable, comforting human touch. He'd given himself over to the Hunter, body and soul. And he knew - he _knew_ he was in safe hands, as surely as he knew anything.

"Sleep," Tarrant said, and even without the fae lending weight to his command Damien found himself obeying.

He let himself sink into the Hunter's embrace and fell asleep that way, cradled by an undead sorceror and the dark fae, unafraid of either. Unafraid.

~*~

"Hells!" Narilka Lessing kicked one of the deathly, unnaturally white trees in frustration. All the Forest's vegetation and its terrible unlife had risen up against the Church's soldiers. There had been confusion, frantic fighting, Andrys's terrified scream as he was nearly swallowed whole - and then, then -

Then, it was as if purpose had come to the Forest's wild assault, and it had driven the humans in front of it, an implacable force, no longer letting even Andrys pass.

But it had ignored her.

It had ignored her, and from that alone she knew: the Hunter must have returned. His promise still stood; she would not be harmed by his own.

She'd stumbled, falling in the confusion, and it all had rushed over her head. When she'd come to her feet again, she'd been on her own. She'd lost the others. For hours, she'd scrambled through the horrible woods, trying to find the party again - _if any of them still lived. If the Forest hadn't simply swallowed them, fed them to the carnivorous plants and the horrible white worms that dwelt in its earth ..._

She shuddered. Where was she? Could she even find her way through this? Could she find Andrys, the soldiers, the Patriarch? If they were even alive ... but no, they had to be. She had to believe it. Could she find her way to the edge of the Forest?

Should she?

Her heart went out to Andrys. He needed her now; he'd been through so much already. He'd been on his way to something better. He'd begun to grow out of his terror, had begun to rediscover purpose. And now? Having failed here, what toll would that take on him? He needed her.

And yet ...

She was the only one who still could move in the Forest, even if she didn't know the way. The mission they'd come here to fulfil, Andrys's mission, the Patriarch's mission - she was the only one who could fulfil it now.

To kill the Hunter, and finally rid the world of the horrors he committed. To free them all of his taint.

There was no one else now. It would have to be her.

  


* * *

  


  
**CHAPTER 4**   


Tarrant circled. Wings spread wide, he let the winds carry him over the Forest, over the towers of his keep. Untouched still; the crusaders hadn't reached here. A brief moment of satisfaction, then speculation occupied his mind again. Too much ahead; too much for many human lifetimes. So many plans to make. No time for resting on his success.

He'd flown ahead, Shapechanging into a bird again as he'd done so many time on their journey. Vryce was following more slowly through the tunnel that connected Mount Shaitan and his keep. The closer he'd come, the clearer it had been that there was no need for hurry. His connection to the Forest had become stronger again after he'd been revived - stronger than it had been in a long time. The Forest, with its rightful master back, was even now driving out the would-be crusaders. Driving out: merely that, not killing them, as once would have been his unquestioned method of dealing with such intrusion.

Merely that, yes. Too much had changed, and if he couldn't quite think where he'd go from here, that was all the more reason not to fall into old patterns unthinkingly. All he knew was that evolution didn't work backwards, even among the damned.

That aside, his returned control over the Forest could only mean one thing: Amoril, his apprentice, was dead. Had Tarrant had his lips, they would have curled in disgust. _Amoril._

Amoril, whom he'd trusted.

Amoril, who had steadily declined over the last decades, who had eventually been driven to ally with Calesta, the would-be destroyer.

Perhaps it was the distance. Perhaps it was years of being away from here that made him see more clearly, see what he had missed before. He should have recognised the corruption in his once-friend, the decline in his sanity. Should have noticed that Amoril, determined though he'd been, simply hadn't had the strength to withstand the powers at work on him. Such was the world of the Hunter; a human could not hope to survive it unscathed.

No mind. Self-recrimination would do no good now.

Tarrant surveyed his keep carefully, studying the currents. Amoril and Calesta ... There was no telling what those two had done here. Even though they were both dead now, their Workings might well survive them.

But save for a general impression of disorder and out-of-control growth, a wild flavour to the fae, Tarrant's finely-tuned senses could detect nothing out of the ordinary.

He circled around the Western tower, over the stables. There was movement there. Tarrant focused on it almost instantly. He had shifted so often, for so long, that the wide bird-vision, sharp at the centre and blurring towards the edges, no longer seemed distorted to his human mind. Three horses were tethered to the fence there.

They were in bad shape. Neglect.

Suddenly livid, Tarrant let out a furious srcreech and dove down.

Two of the horses reared up in panic, not recognising their master. The other had not even that much energy left in it.

All other concerns driven from his mind, Tarrant changed back into human form and reached out to calm the beasts.

~*~

Damien scratched his scalp and took another drink from his canteen. The tunnel seemed endless. He wondered how the Hunter had ever created such a thing, over a distance as vast as the one between Shaitan and Jahanna, all the way through the Black Ridge Mountains, the natural barrier between Shaitan's forces and the rest of the continent. Fae-work, no doubt. He sighed, then pushed himself to his feet again. A few moments' rest was all he allowed himself; he was not at all comfortable leaving Tarrant on his own for even a few hours. Less than a day ago the man had been dead, burnt to a crisp, and now he was already Shapechanging again, and willing to take on an entire crusade.

He hoped with all his heart it would not come to that. How could he take sides in such a thing? The Church fighting evil itself, how could he side against that? How could he side against the Patriarch? But then, how could he side against Tarrant?

He couldn't.

He couldn't, that was all, and he would just have to find some way to make sure it never came to an outright confrontation.

But for that, he needed to be there.

He hurried on.

~*~

Finally, the tunnel ended. It did not emerge into a chamber in the keep's cellar, as Damien might have imagined; instead, it ended at the base of a staircase. Damien began to ascend, an uncomfortably tense feeling in his stomach. Now, to find Tarrant ...

Something tugged at him, and he smiled. He couldn't Work here, couldn't let the fae guide him. The Forest's dark whirlpool was, in its own way, every bit as dangerous as Shaitan's forces. It wouldn't kill him; instead, it would simply swallow him whole. But the channel between them was enough. He suddenly knew he'd always be able to find Tarrant through it. They would never be truly separate again, and that was joy and terror all in one.

Damien pushed the thoughts aside and followed the tug of the fae.

He made his way outside carefully, wary of any soul he might meet here, but the corridors and stairways were deserted. At one point he thought he smelled something rotten, but decided against investigating before he'd found Tarrant. It seemed there was no life left here. Damien shuddered.

Somehow it only seemed right that he should find Tarrant in the stables, rubbing down one of the horses.

The Hunter turned towards him. There was fury in his eyes, icy and dangerous.

"Gerald?"

"If Amoril weren't dead already," Tarrant said tightly, "I would kill him myself. He's been dead less than a day, but these beasts weren't taken care of in much longer than that."

Damien smiled to himself. It wasn't quite compassion, of course, and surely Tarrant could have named any number of selfish reasons for what he was doing. Still, for Tarrant's new life he could imagine much worse starts. He quickly stepped closer and ran a hand over one of the horses. "They'll be all right?" he asked quietly. They seemed well enough to him, but there was no telling how much of that was fae-work, and how much of it would hold.

Tarrant nodded. "They'll be all right. Now." He drew himself upright. "Come; we have work to do."

~*~

"There's no one alive here," Tarrant explained as they made their way up the main staircase towards the library. "From the echoes in the currents, Amoril seems to have been responsible for that too."

Damien hesitated, then forged ahead. "What about the crusaders?" He didn't precisely want to know, but he needed to.

Tarrant smiled with cruel satisfaction. "The Forest is much more than they expected. With its proper master at its centre, they could never have hoped to get even as far as they did."

Cold dread gathered in Damien's stomach, and he stopped, clutching the ornate rail tightly. "Gerald ..."

It seemed to him that there was humour flickering across the channel between them. "They're being driven out. Never worry, Vryce - they'll have a long time to contemplate their failure."

Damien breathed again.

~*~

The ornate wooden door Tarrant pushed open must have been heavy, but it moved on its hinges light as a feather. A gesture from Tarrant was enough to ignite lamps all around. How did he do that, when he had no power over fire? Never mind; he'd ask some other time.

Damien looked curiously around the shelf-lined chamber. Tarrant's private workshop, no doubt, where he kept his most important books and manuscripts. Damien breathed in the smell of leather, paper and ink - and dust; a lot of dust. He coughed. His throat, still raw from Shaitan's fumes, did not like this at all.

Tarrant waited patiently for his coughing to subside. "Untouched," he said finally, satisfaction in his voice. "My wards held; Amoril didn't come here." His gaze swept over the shelves, almost hungrily.

This had always been Tarrant's first love, his most important quest: knowledge, for its own sake. It was what he'd given everything for, back when he'd been mortal, and it meant no less to him now. The Unnamed, Damien knew, had never been more than a means to an end for him. _This_ end.

He'd never been sure whether to cringe or rejoice at that - that Tarrant had been willing to submit to evil itself for _knowledge_ , but had no deeper interest in evil itself and therefore must - _must_ \- be redeemable.

If he wanted.

Tarrant, with long practice, pulled three large leather-bound volumes and a sheaf of manuscripts from the shelves. "You start with this," he said, pointing to one of the books. "I will go through my own notes first."

Damien sat heavily in one of the comfortable, stuffed chairs and leaned his elbows on the desk before him. "What exactly am I looking for?"

Tarrant threw him an irritated glance. "This is the earliest extant account of a sorceror's encounter with a Iezu," he explained. "See if it tells us anything new in light of what we know now."

For a long while, they both read, and took notes, quietly. Eventually Damien stretched and yawned. Tarrant glared at him.

"Perhaps you can go on like this forever," Damien said pointedly, "but I'm human, in case you've forgotten. Time to call it a day." A wry grin. "Well, a night."

Tarrant's glare softened. "Very well." Stiffly he rose. "There are no servants left; we will have to find what we need on our own. Come."

Damien followed him tiredly.

~*~

Tarrant led him to the kitchens and quickly managed to locate the cupboard holding durable travel rations. Nothing fresh was available. Tarrant clearly had expected that, but his expression was still furious. Together with the expensive red wine Tarrant poured for them, it made for a strange meal.

"What, no beer? We are in Jahanna, aren't we?" Damien commented. Jahanna - the Forest - had long been famous for producing the best beer in the region.

Tarrant scowled at him. Of course there was beer, his gaze seemed to say, but who would prefer it over the Hunter's own choice of wine?

Damien grinned to himself and let it lie, applying himself to his food instead. Tarrant sat silently, watching him eat, occasionally sipping from his glass.

"I realise you're not comfortable here," the Hunter finally said. "Perhaps you should leave."

For a moment, Damien couldn't believe he'd heard right. He gave Tarrant a scowl of his own. "And you would feed on what excactly?"

Tarrant looked to the side.

No. No. He couldn't be contemplating ...

Oh hells, of course he was contemplating just that. He perhaps even thought he was being kind. But even if Damien weren't Tarrant's only food source here now - his only safe and willing food source - even without that ... "What makes you think I'd leave you to do this research on your own? I'm not as mad for it as you, maybe, but I'm not blind. I know it's important. I'll help."

Tarrant regarded him thoughtfully. "This place. The Forest, and its power ... I don't think it's a good place for you to stay."

"For me? What about you?"

"I can master it. I _have_ mastered it." Coldly.

Damien was getting angry. "Why this sudden urge to drive me away?"

Tarrant's expression was pained. "Not drive you away; never that. I wouldn't, after everything we've been through." A thin, humourless smile. "Believe me, I've no particular desire to see you leave."

"Then why?"

Tarrant hesitated. "The currents here are strong. You've seen it before, haven't you? You were nearly pulled into it, just _looking_ at the whirlpool of power. And that was from a distance."

Damien did remember: immense dark power, like a black sun blotting out everything else, drawing everything into itself, almost impossible to resist ...

"The longer you stay," Tarrant continued, "the longer those powers have to work on you. And the less you'll remain yourself. They will warp and twist and reshape you, without you even noticing, and by the end you will be something else. Even you, Damien." The rare use of his given name only underlined the genuine concern.

"You sound very sure." Damien squared his shoulders uncomfortably. He'd never even imagine feeling safe here, with good reason, but he hadn't thought there was that kind of danger.

"You remember Amoril. Did you imagine he started out the way he ended? He was my apprentice. Did you think I would offer such a bond to someone I thought unworthy, someone I wasn't willing to give hold of my own soul? You of all people know how precious that is."

He'd never thought ... Well, he'd never thought much about Amoril at all, truth be told. He did remember the albino; he'd just never considered there might have been more to him, had never considered why the Hunter might have taken him on. Had not considered that anything but the Hunter's darkest, worst impulses might have had any part in that.

Of course with Tarrant everything was more complicated than that, and he should have known. He was a man of so many contradictions that one might spend a lifetime trying to disentangle them all.

"He was changed?" he asked quietly.

Tarrant looked down. "I didn't see it until far too late. Perhaps I didn't want to see. But by the end, he wasn't the man I'd known." He raised his head, and his silver eyes fixed on Damien intently. "If something like that should happen to you ..."

There was no denying the depth of feeling in his voice - or was it in his mind, echoing through the channel? Damien's heart clenched. He was thinking furiously. "Is it the fae, or the Forest? Just the power itself, or the way it expresses itself?" he asked eventually.

Tarrant's eyebrows rose. "The power would have effect no matter what," he said, his voice clinical again. "But the kind of effect it has - yes, that is the Forest." The evil of it. The corruption. The Hunter's own shaping.

"You created the Forest. Can't you change it?"

Tarrant stared. Then, abruptly, he put his face in his hands. "Perhaps," he muttered indistinctly.

"Gerald?"

For a long moment, Tarrant didn't respond. Then he looked up again. "Maybe. With time." He looked like someone working out a puzzle. "I have changed even myself, recreated myself, so this ..." He gestured around them. "I don't doubt that this, too, might be reshaped. At its core, it's merely wild fae, after all. A power spot, no more and no less. What a man who has mastered it might do with it, who can tell? Who can say what possibilities he might dream up?" Excitement showed in his eyes as he seemed to contemplate a new experiment.

"You're impossible," Damien muttered. "But if you can change this dark whirlpool into something better, it'll be worth it."

"It'll always be a whirlpool," Tarrant warned. "It will always draw in any Working, any sorcerer who dares touch the fae in its sphere of influence, unless he is very powerful indeed." The warning was serious, but his eyes were bright. "It would no longer corrupt, though. Yes. With enough time, I could do that ..."

Pride. The Hunter's pride, but if it could be harnessed in the service of something good, Damien would not object. He threw Tarrant a challenging look. "Just so long as it no longer overwhelms the country with malevolence. Change _that_ , and you'll truly have done something here." He hesitated. "And about changing yourself ..."

Tarrant nodded, his brain working at lightning speed. "Perhaps there is a way. Not now, not yet, but eventually ... It's not fear or death that sustains my life. It's the dark fae."

What was he getting at? "I don't see -"

"The dark fae is not evil."

"What?" Damien didn't need to see it around them; his mind provided the images readily enough. Slithering, vile, purple corruption snaking over every surface, clinging to everything, seeping into ... "What else is evil if not that?"

Tarrant waved aside his interruption. "I know what you've seen. But that's not its nature, Vryce - that's not what it is. By nature, the dark fae is nothing but the power inherent in absence. It only becomes evil when man projects his darkest, most fearsome and terrible thoughts on it. Then, a natural force becomes the embodiment of evil. But it needn't be." He gestured animatedly. "Think, Vryce! Think what would be if man didn't fear the dark. Think what the world might be like! If we could teach them to look upon it and see -"

And Damien Saw, across the channel: _the image of a young girl, staring in amazement at the darkness of the True Night, never seen before, gazing at its beauty with nothing but delight -_

The image cut off abruptly, as if Tarrant had deliberately cut the memory short.

Damien couldn't help himself. "Did you hunt her?" he demanded. "Did you teach her fear, before she died?"

Tarrant looked at him, calmly. "I promised her safety," he replied.

And Damien could do nothing but stare at the Hunter, this terrible creature who should not have been capable of such a thing. And yet he had been, even then - long before Calesta, long before he'd even begun to turn away from the Unnamed ...

"Why?" he whispered.

Tarrant hesitated. "She saw only beauty and potential," he finally whispered. "It's been a long time since that was all I saw."

But he had, once.

Nothing but beauty and potential: something to use, to shape humanity's future with, not something to destroy and banish from their lives. That had been the Prophet's true vision - and it had always remained so, Damien realised, no matter how far he had strayed from that path. The original vision of his Church, not the denial the Eastern Autarchy preferred to practice.

And it could be, now - Tarrant's Working on Shaitan had given them that. No longer responding to the human subconscious, no longer manifesting physical representations of every fearful thought, the conscious mind was the only thing that would still shape the fae. Darkness need no longer equal evil. So much potential ... Damien was nearly giddy with the thought.

Then something else occurred to him.

"The crusade failed," he said. "But the Church's dream has very nearly come true. We can live with the fae now."

Tarrant smiled, satisfaction clear in his face. "You wonder if it will strengthen the Church, or weaken it. If it will draw new followers, now that its ideal no longer seems a pipe dream, or if its failure here has done too much harm."

Damien nodded, unhappily. "Yes. That." He might not be a priest any more, had in fact willingly given up his calling in order to support Tarrant on his quest, but he was a man of the Church, and he would always be.

But for that matter, so was Tarrant.

Tarrant thought. "It will depend on the Patriarch," he said finally. "It's for him to shape the Church's future. I hope he will choose wisely."

Damien thought of the man who'd denied being an adept, even to himself, even as the fae bent itself around him. He thought of the man who'd tried to shape the Church's future with a seemingly futile crusade because of what the fae had shown him, the paths it had pointed out to him, the futures that were _right_. He smiled.

"He's a great man," was all he said.

~*~

Tarrant took him to a familiar chamber. He'd stayed here, with Senzei Reese, back at the very beginning of their journey. Back when the Hunter had still been an enemy he'd meant to kill one day. An ally of necessity only, and only for the shortest possible time.

Back when he'd been able to see nothing good at all in him. It seemed like a different life now.

The chamber had not changed at all, though. Tarrant quickly Worked the fae, blocking off the worst of the currents, making it safe for Damien to Work, as he had once before.

The Hunter gave the bedding a thorough cleaning with coldfire, narrowing his eyes at Damien as if daring him to comment.

After a moment, he looked away. Damien thought he looked almost uncomfortable. "I'm sorry," Tarrant said. "I will require much longer than this before I'll be able to let you rest in peace from a distance."

Damien grinned. "Afraid to share a bed with me?"

Tarrant threw him a haughty look.

Quietly, they undressed and slipped between blankets. It was almost cozy. Damien nearly snorted to himself. Tarrant and cozy; those were hardly words that went together well. But here, it no longer seemed a contradiction.

"Sleep," Tarrant murmured next to him and tightened his arms around Damien. His embrace felt warm of all things. Comfortable and safe.

He turned towards the Hunter. "Gerald," he rasped.

A flicker of amusement. "Damien. This isn't sleeping."

Damien grinned. "No, it's not." He didn't move then, but merely communicated a thought across the channel between them.

More amusement echoed back at him. "Damien," Tarrant murmured and pulled him closer. "Be sure of this. Be very sure."

There was nothing but sureness in his heart.

Tarrant leaned forward, and their lips touched.

  


* * *

  


  
**CHAPTER 5**   


Narilka stumbled into the clearing and took a breath of relief. Finally! She'd found the Hunter's keep. The dark, looming castle seemed threatening, but she was not afraid. She'd wandered around the Forest for what must have been an entire day and night, and no harm had come to her. No fae-born monsters had assaulted her in the darkness. Her only enemy had been lack of direction; the dense Forest allowed for no sunlight, making it impossible to tell which direction was which. It was luck, then, that had led her here after all - luck, or perhaps providence, assisting her on her chosen mission.

She cringed a little, thinking of the two occasions she'd met the Hunter. He'd been nothing but courteous to her on the first, had opened her eyes to things she'd never even conceived. And on the second, even after nearly killing her, he had immediately apologised upon recognising her. Part of her thought poorly of herself for repaying him like this. But what did her own safety count, when he was preying on others all this time? It needed to stop. For Andrys, for their unborn child, for every soul in the land - it needed to stop.

It needed to _stop_ , and there wasn't anyone else. She wished for Andrys, the Patriarch and his soldiers, for anyone who might do this in her stead, but there was only her.

Determined, she approached the building and slipped inside, beginning a methodical search. She'd find him. She had to.

~*~

Something in the back of Damien's brain was asking him what the hells he thought he was doing. He ignored it and kissed Tarrant again, revelling in the strangeness of being able to touch him like this. He had to believe it was grace and not merely his own corruption, had to believe Tarrant's sacrifice meant more than that.

If darkness had him in its grip, he refused to believe it was evil.

Once, he would have felt nothing but revulsion at the very thought - immediate, visceral. He'd known nothing of the man behind the Hunter, had known nothing of what he was capable of beside the evil he did. Gerald was so much more than that.

Skin on skin, here, together, whatever they were building surely couldn't be of evil.

He ran his hand over Tarrant's shoulder, his arm, and all he could feel was wonder: that this was possible, that the barriers between them had dissolved. Even at the price he'd paid, it was worth it.

Yes, he had allowed the Hunter's darkness into his very soul - but if their souls mingled, surely the corruption must go both ways. And yes, he had given himself to the Hunter, had offered the deepest, most terrifying recesses of his mind up to his friend, had given it all freely and gladly - but Tarrant had, just as freely, given back as much and more. Tarrant had given all of himself to save them. His life, his future, everything he held dear. How could his touch be corruption, after that? It couldn't. It could _not_.

Tarrant's skin felt human to him, warm and soft and real. Perhaps it wasn't what he was, right now - but it was what he could, with effort, one day become.

Tarrant's path was by no means at an end, and by no means need it lead into darkness again.

Damien clung to him as tightly as he could and poured all of his heart into the touch.

~*~

Quietly, Narilka went along another corridor, looking for signs of recent disturbance, listening closely at all the doors, checking for any sounds, then peeking inside. She'd been through so many of them already, all empty. But in the kitchens, where she'd finally had chance to refresh herself - yes, there of all places, there had been signs of recent activity, used wine glasses and spilled water next to the sink. There was someone here; she wasn't on a wild-goose chase.

Some doors she had not been able to open; there must have been still-active wards on them. She kept them in mind; she'd check back to see if someone had been there in the meantime. In one of the rooms she'd come through, she'd picked up a dagger. She'd lost her own weapon in the Forest, back when she'd been separated from the others.

 _Andrys ..._

Narilka thought of him bitterly. If only she'd been able to protect him from this, shield him from this failure that would eat at him, crumble the narrow foundations he'd managed to build. She was afraid for him, deathly afraid. If he survived the Forest, he might not manage to come back from this at all.

If he survived; if any of them lived. It wasn't likely; she knew. She remembered only too well what the Forest could do to intruders.

Narilka shuddered. Another thing to be laid at the Hunter's feet, as if he hadn't done enough to Andrys already. As if slaughtering his entire family hadn't been enough.

Determined, she moved forward. The next door she approached had a small glass panel in its centre, and she could see movement through it. It hadn't been covered; whoever was inside probably hadn't thought it necessary in an empty castle. Narilka moved closer, pressing her face against the glass. Then she reared back again, shocked.

Yes, she had found him, but not in any way she'd expected.

Yes, this was him, this was the Hunter - with someone else, in bed, clearly engaged in ... Narilka shuddered. How did the other bear it? Inhuman chill radiated from the Hunter's figure even at a distance; she remembered it well. How far must that man be corrupted, to no longer even feel it? How much darkness must there be in him, to be comfortable with the Hunter's touch?

No mind. She'd wait until they fell asleep, and then ...

Then, time to bring this to an end.

~*~

Damien woke with a start. Before his conscious mind had had chance to fully take stock of the situation, he'd already knocked the woman away. Who was she? How had she managed to sneak in here? It didn't matter; she had a dagger and clearly meant business. Heedless of the fact that he himself was naked and unprotected, he pushed himself between the woman and Tarrant.

Pale, black-haired and slender, almost fragile-looking, she stood there, but the determination in her eyes belied any fragility. Damien thought the she looked familiar. He'd seen her before, somewhere, though he could not recall where -

"Stand aside," the woman hissed.

He didn't even dignify that with an answer.

"Do you even know what he is?" she demanded. "What he's done?"

Something in Damien's stomach clenched tightly. "Better than anyone," he admitted. "All of it. You can have no idea."

She shook her head and advanced again. "It will never end while the Hunter lives." It seemed to him that there was almost regret in her voice.

"No." Categorical. Once upon a time he'd have agreed with her. Once upon a time there would have been no question, even if it could not be allowed to happen, that it was _right_ that Tarrant should die for his crimes. Now, though ... _No._ Just no.

Damien held her off effortlessly. She was no warrior, and no match at all for a man of his training. He dodged her dagger and had it twisted out of her grasp before she knew what was happening. It clattered to the floor. He pushed her down, held her still, picking up the dagger with his free hand. "Will you stop it!"

"Never," she replied, furious. "You'll have to kill me."

And he knew at that moment that she meant it. She wouldn't stop, and he'd protect Tarrant, always, and eventually, no matter how hard he tried, there would come the moment when ...

"Don't think that I won't," he snapped. Instinctively he raised the dagger.

"Vryce." A cool voice from behind him.

Damien stopped, appalled at himself. He turned his head. Tarrant was not smiling, but it seemed to him there was amusement in his eyes.

"I'm not your bodyguard, you know," he huffed. Acting normal. Pushing through, because if he thought for a moment about what he'd almost done ...

And then he wondered what Tarrant would do to her. What he might have to stop Tarrant from doing.

Tarrant narrowed his eyes at him, then turned towards the woman. "Mes Lessing," he said calmly, heedless of his own nudity, as if he was greeting an acquaintance on the street. "Pray tell, what brings you here all by yourself?"

"I'm the only one who could," she spat and twisted in Damien's grip. Then the fight seemed to leave her. She slumped, her eyes lowered, and it seemed to Damien there was a great sadness in her voice when she continued, "Someone had to, and I was the only one who could. It has to end, Mer Tarrant. It's a poor way to repay your gift, I grant you, but ... you are what you are. And it needs doing."

Tarrant regarded her thoughtfully. "What I am," he said conversationally, "is much more complicated than you know. But that's no matter, now." He shook his head. "Let her go, Vryce. I promised her safety, and she'll have it. I wouldn't renege on my word."

In that instant, Damien knew where he'd seen her before: in that brief flash of memory across the channel, the girl who'd seen beauty in the darkness. The girl Tarrant had spared. _Beauty and potential ..._ She'd learned to see other things in the meantime, then.

"Damn you, Gerald," Damien burst out, "that solves absolutely nothing." But he let go of the woman, and she slowly stood. No doubt she knew exactly what the Hunter's word meant.

"Vryce," Tarrant announced sarcastically, "may I introduce Narilka Lessing, who, for reasons of her own, has decided to grace us with her company. Mes Lessing, this is Damien Vryce."

Ever polite, as if this were a social occasion, as if they weren't standing on a battleground.

A stalemate; no clear moves ahead.

~*~

They were fully dressed now, and sitting at the table with Narilka. It was awkward, to say the least. Tarrant remained aloof, distant, and slightly amused, as if a person intruding into his bedchamber intent on killing him were cause for _amusement_. Damien, on the other hand, felt his stomach clench.

"Why did you show me what you did?" Narilka finally asked. "I always wanted to believe it meant something; that there was more to you than ... what you do."

"Did you?" His voice was haughty. "It was a whim, nothing more."

Damien wanted to slap him.

Narilka smiled. "Even if it were, I'm not so self-deluded that I could let that matter. Not if I can ..." She shrugged helplessly. "You're a man of honour; you understand obligation."

He did. So did Damien. Like him, he realised, she'd seen something of the Hunter's better side. Like him, years ago, she understood that that changed nothing. Her determination to kill Tarrant was his own, from years ago.

There was only one thing to do.

Haltingly, and trying to ignore the fact that Tarrant was listening, he began the tale of their adventures, the last years. He told Narilka everything - their alliance for Ciani's sake, their fight against the Master of Lema. Their trip to Mercia and beyond. He told her of Calesta, how that demon's plot to reshape the world in his own sadistic image had slowly become clear to them; how, finally, they'd understood just what was at stake. Narilka listened with horrified fascination. He felt as if he were justifying himself, to his own past self as much as to her. When he reached the part about Shaitan, about Tarrant's sacrifice, he thought she stared at him almost with wonder. Then her eyes hardened again.

"But you're still what you are," she said, speaking to Tarrant.

Tarrant nodded. "No argument," he said.

"It's not what he needs to remain," Damien snapped. "Stop it, both of you, with duty and obligation and insane concepts of honour. Gerald, you became what you are; you can un-become it. You said so yourself. And you're _not_ what you were. The man you were, three years ago, would not have let the crusaders live."

Narilka's spine straightened at that, and she looked at him almost hungrily. Then she turned to Tarrant again. "They live?" she demanded. "Say it. Give your word, and I'll believe it." A deep, shuddering breath. "I know what that's worth."

"They live," he promised. "The Forest drove them out, no more than that. My word on it, Mes Lessing."

Abruptly she stood and walked over to one of the barred windows, stared into nothing. "He's right," she finally said, tonelessly. "You would not have done that, then."

No, he wouldn't have. He'd have felt no inclination towards mercy at all. Not that he had much of it now, but there was something. And besides, then, it would have violated his compact with the Unnamed. Any act of mercy, no matter how small, would have endangered his very being.

Damien said none of that. "No killing, all right?" was all he said.

Narilka turned to him and smiled, sadly. "You're so sure," she said wonderingly. "So sure of him. Maybe after three years in his company, you must be. But I can't know what you know. It's not so simple for me."

Damien looked at her assessingly for a long moment. Abruptly, he turned towards Tarrant. "Have you ever broken your word?"

"You mean apart from my business with the lady Ciani."

Damien smiled. "You did more than make up for that. Yes, apart from Ciani."

The Hunter looked away for the longest time. "Once," he finally whispered. "Only once."

And Damien knew, with utter certainty, who he meant. _To have and to hold ..._ He wondered what vows Tarrant had sworn to his wife, but he had no doubt that he had broken them all. Not merely by hastening the death that did them part in the end, but by everything he did to her before.

He wondered if the Hunter was capable of regretting that, even now.

"You still love her," he whispered. He had seen it only too clearly when they had met the shade of Almea Tarrant in Shaitan's valley. Tarrant did still love her, even now. That had to count for something.

"I loved her then," Tarrant replied, a challenge in his voice. "Otherwise, my sacrifice would have held no power."

Bile rose in Damien's throat, but he didn't turn away. "Your word, Gerald. I know better than anyone how far you're willing to go to keep it. And Narilka, I think, knows it too. Enough of it, at any rate."

It seemed to him that the Hunter smiled slightly. "What is it that you want me to promise, Damien?" Gently.

"Ask her." His voice was rough. "Ask her, and maybe it'll be enough, and there need be no killing." Vehemently, "I'm _tired_ of killing, Gerald. And you can't tell me you wouldn't rather return to your studies without an assassin at your back."

Tarrant inclined his head slightly; a concession. Then he turned towards Narilka, stiffly. "Mes Lessing? If you'd be amenable to Vryce's suggestion ..."

~*~

Alone at last. Tarrant had given Narilka a guest room so she could rest before setting out again, and now they were by themselves. Damien turned to Tarrant, trading solemn expressions. All the things that could have gone wrong ...

Then Tarrant lifted one sarcastic eyebrow, and Damien snorted. Suddenly there was no stopping. Laughter came bubbling up, irresistible, inescapable. _Tarrant, completely naked, calmly introducing a woman intent on killing him ..._ Damien's shoulders shook with it.

"You're hysterical, Vryce." Tarrant's tone was cool as always.

Damien stepped closer, still laughing. "Shut it, Gerald." He pulled the Hunter against him, tightly, and laughed into his shoulder. Tarrant stood still, not returning the embrace, but neither resisting. Finally Damien pulled back a little and looked Tarrant directly in the eye. Tarrant blinked. He must be sensing it through the channel between them - all the unspoken emotion, the sheer, stark relief ...

Damien couldn't even be embarrassed.

Meeting Narilka had been like being confronted with his own past self. All the arguments he could have with himself, all his faith in Tarrant was not quite the same as that, telling his story to another. And he had convinced _her_. Seeing another believe, as he did, that Tarrant was worth saving - that he'd earned his chance at redemption ...

God. Such impossible relief.

"Gerald." Breathlessly.

For a moment, they were suspended like that, eyes locked, neither of them moving. Damien broke first; with another surge of giddy relief he moved forward, his lips meeting Tarrant's in a biting, bruising kiss.

This time, Tarrant met him move for move. Tongues duelled, teeth clacked, Damien's body surged against Tarrant's. When he had to come up for air, he used the brief moment of clarity to push Tarrant backwards, guiding him to the bed. Tarrant resisted only for an eyeblink, just long enough to show he was still in control, that he was choosing to yield. The Hunter's inhuman strength was far greater than Damien's, but he let Damien set the pace.

Damien tumbled them onto the bed, settled between Tarrant's thighs and fumbled with their clothing. His fingers were clumsy, his movements too slow.

Tarrant agreed. After several long moments hadn't succeeded in ridding them of the barrier of cloth and leather, he snarled, gripped Damien's shoulders, and with one smooth move had them turned around. He bent down and hissed in Damien's ear, "You need more practice. Some other time."

Deft fingers divested them both of their clothes. Damien gasped. Skin to skin again, finally, and Tarrant was pushing down on him, holding him in place with more than human strength. He bit down on Damien's shoulder, drawing blood. It went straight to Damien's cock.

Then he realised it was the Hunter's surge of arousal he felt, through their bond: his blood on the Hunter's tongue, his body under the Hunter's hands, and the channel between them wide open.

He bucked up, but Tarrant held him in place, muscles hard and unyielding. "Patience," he admonished, then shaped the sigils of a Working on his lips. Tendrils of fae snaked up on the bed, winding around them, holding Damien in place. And Tarrant began, expertly and exquisitely slowly, to take Damien apart with fingers and tongue, with bites and caresses, with brushes of fae. The constant terrifying undercurrent of their bond only intensified the sensation.

This was different, so different from their earlier, careful caresses. Urgency and need sublimated into supreme control, into carefully cultivated restraint ... This was the Hunter. This was Tarrant when all caution was set aside. Commanding. Controlling. _Powerful._

Damien moaned.

When Tarrant's fingers finally breached him, he was more than ready for it. He'd been ready for what felt like an eternity. It was all he could do not to come at the first brush against his prostate.

"Not yet," Tarrant hissed and clamped down brutally on his balls.

He entered him slowly, so slowly; Damien tried to move against him, but Tarrant held him tightly. Finally they were fully joined, and Tarrant smiled against Damien's mouth, offering a leisurely kiss. Suddenly the tendrils of fae that had bound him were gone - Damien could wrap his arms around Tarrant, surging up, clinging to him all in one move. Tarrant met him, thrusting into him hard, again, and again, and again ...

Damien saw stars when he came. Tarrant joined him only moments later.

~*~

Narilka stared at him. She couldn't help it.

He was the Hunter, the man who'd terrorised women in the region for centuries, whose very name could send grown men into panic. He was a monster, a killer, deadlier than any fae-born thing. And he'd given her his word - his _word_ , which she knew he would keep at all costs. He'd given her his word that it would stop. That it was over; that it would not happen again.

She thought that, even with everything the former priest had told her, it would not have been such a clear-cut thing at all, if not for her. If she hadn't been here to extract this promise. So perhaps she'd made a difference after all, even if she hadn't killed him.

She felt guiltily glad that she hadn't.

Part of her was still fascinated by him, by what he'd shown her, by all the beauty and potential of a world alive - a world hidden from ordinary human eyes. Perhaps she could explore that now. Sorcery - why not? She wanted to _see_.

And perhaps she could learn how to help Andrys too. It could only help him, couldn't it, to see more? To have less hidden from him, less to be afraid of. The Hunter's promise never to harm him or his family again should help him too.

That, too, Tarrant had promised her.

He'd promised not to victimise; to feed without doing damage, on fear he hadn't instilled, unless with a volunteer. Narilka had a good idea who would volunteer for such duty. She didn't quite understand the relationship between the Hunter and the former priest, but clearly the priest's company did the Hunter good.

Gerald Tarrant walked her outside then, handed her a compass and pointed her in the right direction. "You will find your way with this," he promised. "And I will come see you, as I said. Andrys will have my word, personally."

She nodded. She believed him. Then she looked around herself again. The Forest was as it always had been, ugly and vile, a thing of death and decay, and lifeforms thriving on such. The vile unlife of the Hunter's realm. "This isn't the beauty you showed me," she said quietly.

"No." The Hunter's voice was hoarse. "No, Mes Lessing, this is what beauty becomes when men fear it." He bowed to her then, formally, according to Revivalist custom, the etiquette of a long-lost time. "I have given my word. This, too, will change."

Strangely, impossibly, despite everything he was, everything he'd been, she believed him.

  


* * *

  


  
**EPILOGUE**   


Damien looked up from the book he'd been skimming for more Iezu-related information and smiled fondly at Tarrant.

Who'd have thought that an assassination attempt was just what they needed? But Damien had felt lighter since. Lighter, more sure of himself, and less worried about the future.

Narilka had heard his story, and believed.

And more than that - there was the promise Narilka had extracted from Tarrant at Damien's instigation. He knew the difference it made to Tarrant, having given his word. There was no doubt what path he was on now.

Pride, arrogance, supreme confidence in his own rigorous code of honour - was that any basis for redemption? Or did it matter? Perhaps it simply made it easier for him, helped him overcome temptation to stray from the path.

It was a first step, at any rate; Tarrant himself would have to make the rest. Tarrant always did what he did for his own reasons. Whether they were good enough was, in the end, for God alone to judge. But Damien had faith.

They had come from such opposite places when they'd met, and yet they'd met in the middle, far from the absolutes of Damien's early convictions or the demands of the Unnamed. And pulling Tarrant out of the darkness had to be worth the loss of his own purity. What did his purity count, compared to saving another? saving the world? Who could be so selfish as that? Not he.

Not that he wasn't selfish. He wanted Tarrant, wanted to be by Tarrant's side, could no longer imagine a life without the man. If he paid for that with nightmares, feeding the Hunter with his fear - well, that too was worth it. So long as they were together, there was little he wasn't prepared to give.

What else was left for him, anyway? The Church certainly wouldn't have him again, no matter his faith. Tainted by the Hunter, corrupted by his willing participation in an act so vile it defied description, opening his soul to the demonic ...

Not so long ago, bile would have risen in his throat at the very thought. How far away that seemed now! Besides ... _The quality of the One God is Mercy._

Tarrant was free of the Unnamed now, no longer forbidden compassion, no threat of it undoing his very being as it had while he'd been bound to the Unnamed. It didn't mean he would be moved to compassion, of course; it simply meant he had options.

And he, Damien, was bound to that man forever. Would always be able to feel him at the back of his mind; would feed him with every nightmare, every fleeting fearsome thought. Would always have to struggle against being overwhelmed by the Hunter's very essence.

Damien's smile broadened. Not a bad future, all in all.


End file.
